


The Beast Below

by ViolettaValery



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: BAMF Alex Manes, Darkfic-adjacent, Getting Back Together, Happy Ending, Jesse Manes gets what he deserves, M/M, Maria Deluca gets what she deserves, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:35:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22215682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolettaValery/pseuds/ViolettaValery
Summary: They say about some men that all the pain and misery and loneliness just made them kind.You can’t say that about Alex Manes. Not anymore.He’d left hope and light behind in a toolshed. He’d left nice in the Middle East. But he’d left kind in the dust the day Maria DeLuca said “actually, we’re open.”
Relationships: Alex Manes/Other(s), Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, minor Michael Guerin/Maria Deluca
Comments: 41
Kudos: 219





	The Beast Below

**Author's Note:**

> So I basically just wanted to write a fic in which, instead of being upset that Michael went to Maria, Alex is calm and confident because he knows Michael will eventually return to him. Who is just patiently waiting for Michael's relationship with Maria to implode, as he knows it will. Of course, an Alex with that level of confidence and self-assurance is...not exactly canonical, so this veered into darkfic-adjacent territory, where Alex is sure of himself, not devastated, a little bit manipulative, and a little ruthless. And let me tell you, that was fucking cathartic to write. I loved letting Alex stand up for himself, tell it like it is, and get his happy ending, very little of which canon will probably give us. And now that I got it out of my system, I feel much better. 
> 
> References to other nerdy properties abound; have fun spotting them.

They say about some men that all the pain and misery and loneliness just made them kind. 

You can’t say that about Alex Manes. Not anymore.

He’d left hope and light behind in a toolshed. He’d left _nice_ in the Middle East. But he’d left _kind_ in the dust the day Maria DeLuca said “actually, we’re open.”

___________________

Michael, at least, gives him the kindness of an explanation.

“I’m sorry. I just need…Hell, I don’t even know what I need. But we’re complicated, Alex, and I just _can’t_ right now.”

“I understand,” he reassures. “Believe me, Michael, I do.”

“I didn’t do it to hurt you, Alex. I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know,” Alex tells him. “And it’s alright. Really, it is.”

“You’re not upset?” Michael asks, a confused frown creasing his eyebrows. “Or angry? Why aren’t you angry?” He sounds desperate, like he _wants_ Alex to be angry. Like he _needs_ it for the world to make sense.

But Alex is done finding reasons to be angry at Michael.

“I’d be upset if you called me easy. The important ones are never easy.” He reaches for Michael, cradling that beloved face in his hands. “You’ll come back to me, Michael. I know you will. And I’ll be waiting when you do.”

They press their foreheads together almost on instinct, and Michael closes his eyes, stays statue-still for a beat, before wrenching himself away with a pained expression.

“Goodbye, Michael,” he says softly. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

Michael says nothing else, just watches in silence as Alex drives away.

With the prospect of nothing but weeks of thankless work on Project Sheppard files, he heads to the bunker. Where he finds Kyle pointing a gun at his father.

“I wanted to buy a gun but I couldn’t do it,” Kyle rails. “I’m not like you. I’m not a killer.”

“Wait,” he orders as Kyle moves to plunge a syringe into his father’s arm.

“He’s a killer, Alex,” Kyle implores. “I was only going to put him in a coma, which is better than he deserves.”

“I’ll take it from here,” he says in his authoritative voice. The one with which he commanded men to their death.

“Alex – “ Kyle protests.

“Don’t worry. _I_ won’t kill him either.”

Kyle hesitates, but nods, handing the syringe to Alex. His father follows the exchange, turning his cold eyes from Kyle to his son.

“You’re a traitor,” he snarls. “A _monster,_ despite all my best efforts.”

Alex smiles. “Or perhaps I’ve become just like you, Dad. You succeeded at making me in your image.”

He plunges the syringe in before his father can say another word.

Hours later, Jesse Manes wakes up in one of the cold, sterile cells that he’s become intimately familiar with since he discovered his legacy.

_________________

Maria, it turns out, has real feelings and that delicate hope that comes with a burgeoning romance.

Michael wants something easy, but for the first time, Maria Deluca throws caution to the wind and asks that they try.

Alex finds that out because Maria tells Liz, who tells Rosa, who tells him.

Alex watches from afar as Michael indulges her, playing at commitment with casual lunches at the Crashdown and hookups in the back of his truck (Alex doesn’t stay to watch those once he realizes what’s happening).

A younger him would have been devastated, but this Alex Manes is insulated by the certainty that they will always find their way back to each other. He’s tried to run from it for ten years, and after all that time, he couldn’t stay away any more than a planet could leave its sun’s orbit.

Now, it’s Michael’s turn to discover that, so Alex waits with the patience of a soldier. He works through Project Sheppard files, and he blows off steam with a blue-haired hottie he meets at Saturn’s Rings. They spend a thoroughly pleasant few hours in bed together, after which Alex promptly kicks him out the second he makes overtures about staying the night.

It doesn’t stop the guy from coming back for seconds, ignoring Alex’s firm statements that he has to work.

“I’d be happy to distract you,” the guy (Forrest? Is that his name?) purrs, and Alex rolls his eyes.

“Give it a go, then,” he says, turning back to his laptop.

The guy goes down on him with practiced ease and no small amount of skill while Alex continues typing away. Alex can tell that he’s getting more and more frustrated as he focuses on his code; his movements become more frantic, taking Alex down all the way to the hilt, wet and messy. Finally, Alex comes half-heartedly, his mind still on the recurring loop that his program keeps getting stuck in. He’s just on the cusp of figuring it out when his climax interrupts him -

“You’re really something, you know?” the guy says, licking a bead of come off his lips. His cheeks are flushed, while his pants sport evidence that he reached his own climax at some point when his mouth was full of Alex’s dick. “But I like a good challenge.”

Alex fixes him with a cold stare. “I can tell,” he says.

The guy stands and gives a curt nod. “I get it,” he says. “I won’t bother you again.” He pauses at the door and adds. “Thanks.”

Alex doesn’t acknowledge the words. He has a recurring loop to fix.

_____________________

Finally, Maria comes to talk to him. She can’t meet his eyes as she talks, dropping words like _hope_ and _feelings_ and _real._ She doesn’t mention the words she’d said when she’d looked him in the eyes and made a promise, and he doesn’t bring them up. She ends with a stuttered apology, a reassurance that “I _never_ meant to hurt you, you have to know that.”

Alex doesn’t correct her.

“Does he make you happy?” He asks instead.

“Yes,” she says with the painful honesty of a best friend.

“Good,” he says, and Maria stares at him in surprise. “Enjoy the happiness you have with him.”

“Thank you,” she says, gratitude shining in her eyes. “Thank you for understanding – “

“Savor it while you have it, because it won’t last.” 

“W-what?” she asks shakily.

“Oh, _Maria,_ ” Alex says softly. “He loves me. You have him for now, but he’ll come back to me.”

“No,” she insists, shaking her head. “You’ve hurt him too many times. But he and I have something _real._ ”

Alex smiles in amusement. “You cannot have something real unless you know him for all that he is and love him in his worst moments. Can you say that?”

“Yes,” she insists, and Alex pities her. She doesn’t even know she’s lying.

__________________________

He and Michael still talk. In fact, with Michael in a nebulous commitment to Maria, they have a chance to actually work at being friends. They talk, and Alex shares any relevant information as he discovers it in the files they took from Caulfield.

He doesn’t tell Michael about his father. It’s not time yet.

At first, Michael avoids the topic of Maria, likely out of some kind of respect for his feelings. So it’s Alex who brings it up, asking how things are going.

“Good,” is Michael’s curt reply.

“Hmm. And when she leaves, are you prepared for that?”

Michael levels him with a truly unimpressed glare. 

“Maria likes having me around, Alex. She _doesn’t_ leave, that’s the whole point.”

“She will, one day. But I’ll be here. In the end, I’ll be the one who stayed. The one who knows you and will _always_ stay.”

Michael scoffs. He has a right to disbelieve him, Alex thinks. But soon, he’ll learn. 

“She doesn’t know the truth about you, does she?”

“You didn’t know for years – “ Michael protests.

“And once I found out, I chose you, every single time. I chose you over my family, my legacy, the very blood in my veins. She inherited that very same legacy. Do you think she’ll make the same choice?”

Michael says nothing.

“She betrayed me to choose you,” Alex continues. “Do you really think she won’t betray you either? Do you think she’ll love you for all that you are, as I do? Or are you keeping the truth from her because you _know_ that the thing you insist is real needs a lie to survive? Because you suspect what she’d be capable of, if she knew what you are, to save her mother?”

Anger flares in Michael’s eyes.

“Why are you doing this, Alex?” he demands. “Is this some – what, sick and twisted revenge because I chose her?”

“No, it’s the truth. The one thing that seems to be in short supply around here lately.”

Michael storms off in a huff. Alex watches him go, admiring the grace of his stride, silhouetted against the crimson sky.

Soon, that beautiful being would be his again.

__________________________

He bumps into Maria as he’s on his way out from visiting Mimi.

“Alex- “ she says, surprised. Alex doesn’t know why she would be. Mimi hasn’t done anything to him.

“Maria,” he greets her. “How are you?”

She lets slip a small smile. “Good,” she says. Alex doesn’t need to ask what it is making her life _good_ right now.

“You don’t know what he is, do you?” Alex asks, because things wouldn’t be _good_ if she knew.

She frowns. “I know enough. I know he’s a good man. I know – “

Alex smiles pityingly at her. Maria crosses her arms and tries to stare him down.

“And you do?” she challenges.

“Oh yes. I love him for all that he is, and you have _no idea_ what that means. You probably don’t even know how he healed his hand.” 

“A faith healer,” she replies quickly. “But he swore she could only heal physical injuries, that she couldn’t fix my mother’s mind.”

“ _She,”_ Alex repeats softly.

Maria nods. “Yes, he found her after the trip to Texas – “

“You don’t have long,” he says. “I’ll be here, when you need someone.” 

He doesn’t wait to hear what she has to say in response.

____________________

They’re in the Crashdown when Wyatt Long decides to honor a decade-long tradition and shoot it up. Maria and Michael sitting across from each other, sharing a shake, a perfect facsimile of a date. Liz is helping out Rosa at the Crashdown, Alex isgrabbing takeout.

They all jump when the first bullet breaks glass.

Alex reacts instinctively; he’s about to dive for cover and shout at everyone else to get down, but before he can, Michael has tackled him to the ground, shielding Alex’s body with his own as bullets hit the wall above their head and glass rains down on them.

Of the two of them, Alex is hardly the one who needs protection in a firefight, but he smiles at the feel of the long line of Michael’s body above him, warm and firm.

When the last of the bullets has lodged itself in a sign advertising milkshakes, Michael lets out a breath, but doesn’t let Alex up until he pushes up against him. He lets Alex up, but his hands are everywhere, on Alex’s shoulders, his chest, unable not to touch.

“Are you all right?” Michael asks, his face all concern.

“ _I’m_ fine,” he says.

Michael glances up. Maria and Liz have also dived for cover, but now that it’s over, Maria has raised her head, and her eyes are fixed on the two of them curled together like lovers. She’s unharmed, but Alex notices the gleam of resignation in her eyes.

“Come find me when it’s over,” he says to Michael. “I’ll be waiting, and I have something for you.”

He shoots Maria one final glance before he leaves.

“Fire exposes our priorities,” he says, and doesn’t stay to relish the look on her face.

_____________________

Michael doesn’t come to him right away, but Alex doesn’t worry. He’s learned to be patient.

He finds out it’s over when he finds Maria crying on the roof of the Crashdown, where he’s come for some peace and quiet. Sobs wrack her slender frame, and once, Alex’s heart would have ached for her.

“Alex,” she says, surprised.

“It’s over, isn’t it?” he says softly.

“For him. But not for me. I love him, Alex, and it _hurts._ ”

“Oh, _Maria,_ ” he says, and he sees hope flare in her eyes that her old friend is still there.

“You know you got yourself into this mess, don’t you?” he continues, and sees that hope flare out. “It’s a direct, logical consequence of your actions.”

Through necessity, he had reached a point long ago where emotions became like computer code to him. A series of variables, inputs and outputs, protocols and logical outcomes.

He had always been an excellent codebreaker, and he’s had weeks, during which the present situation has resolved itself into a set of cold, logical facts that he now takes pleasure in laying out, calmly and clinically.

“Michael said that it was over, but you knew I had hope about our future together, and those two things directly contradicted each other,” he says. “But you didn’t ask Michael what he meant, and you didn’t ask me for the truth, because your delusion was a pleasant place to live in. And you most certainly didn’t tell him that it wasn’t over for me, because you didn’t want him to know that he had a chance with me. And now you have to watch the man you love be with your best friend in front of your eyes, and it is so beautifully _neat,_ because it is _exactly_ what you did to me, Maria. And if I was still your friend, I’d pat you on the back and offer a drink and listen to your _boy problems._ ”

He places emphasis on the phrase, knowing that they’re both remembering that first conversation about Michael. That was the beginning of the end, the first of the bold-faced lies and empty promises. “But I’m not your friend. You made sure of that when you lied to my face and went behind my back.”

Maria stares at him, so shocked that she’s even stopped sobbing. 

“What happened to you, Alex? You were never this cruel.”

“Neither were you, once upon a time,” he answers.

He stands.

“Goodbye, Maria,” he says softly.

Her sobs follow him, but he doesn’t turn back.

_____________________

The second Michael sees him, he sinks to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Alex runs his hands through those beloved curls and tips his head up. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“There is nothing important in the world that doesn’t include you,” Michael says. “Could you ever forgive me for thinking otherwise? I’ll prove it. Anything you ask.”

“Hush,” Alex says softly. “You already have. And I’m so glad you’ve come back. I have something for you.”

They drive in silence, holding hands, until they reach the bunker.

The moment Michael sees Jesse Manes, he freezes. His father’s expression, however, hardly changes.

“I should have known,” he spits. “ _He_ corrupted you, made you into a monster just like him.”

Alex ignores him, turning to Michael. “He made a mistake when he made me enlist,” he explains, answering Michael’s unspoken question. “It made me like him, which means I know how to fight people like him and win.”

He reaches for Michael’s hand, twining their fingers together. A promise. “He’s all yours now.”

Michael grins, and Alex can feel the first hints of Michael’s power simmering below the surface, evident in the way the lightbulbs flicker and the glass of his father’s cell shakes.

“I don’t want to be the monster he thinks I am,” Michael whispers.

“He is the monster,” Alex reassures him. “You are the one who will slay it.”

Michael hesitates for a moment longer, the lights flickering, a high-speed chiaroscuro. Then -

“Do you have a hammer?” he asks. 

Michael holds Jesse pinned with his powers and swings the hammer down four times. Jesse screams. 

“How would you like me to kill him, my love?” Michael squeezes slightly, and Jesse begins to choke.

Alex comes to stand next to him, chest to chest, and turns Michael’s head until they’re facing each other.

“Avenge me,” he whispers, and knows the moment that Michael _understands._

He stalks forward like a predator, squeezing the air out of Jesse Manes’ lungs. “Do you remember?” he drawls. “Before he broke my hand, he put his hands on your throat.”

“You monster,” is the last words Jesse Manes utters before he crumples to the floor unceremoniously.

Electricity crackles in the air around them like it does before a storm. And Michael – Michael looks like a god, drunk on power.

“Killing really does make us stronger,” he says, awed. Then he falls to his knees before Alex again.

“It’s yours,” he offers, taking Alex’s hands in his own, and it’s like holding a live wire. “Whatever you want me to do with it.”

Alex tugs him up and, slowly, unbuttons his own shirt, takes Michael’s hand and places it on his chest.

Michael needs no other encouragement to burn a handprint into Alex’s skin. He tears his eyes away from his father’s immobile body to admire the glittering alien mark on his chest.

Then, Alex tugs him outside.

“Make it storm,” he commands, and Michael does. Lightning rages in the sky and water cascades down. They kiss in the storm, until Michael pushes him backward towards the truck and creates a cocoon of air. They make love on the bed of the truck, the elements raging around them, lightning setting the desert on fire.

The next day marks their first real date. They sit side-by-side in a booth at the Crashdown, holding hands off which they’ve only just washed the (metaphorical) blood and sharing a shake – one of Rosa’s glittery pink-and-purple concoctions. 

Maria walks in, sees them, and freezes.

Alex shoots her a kind smile. After all, he’s been in her shoes before; he knows what it’s like to love Michael Guerin.

He’s worth a friendship. 


End file.
